Five Things That Might Have Happened
by Travithian Axile
Summary: ...to Yagami Raito. Self-explanatory, one-shot.


Five Things That Might Have Happened to Yagami Raito

(if fate had permitted)

i. over before it begun

The day is warm and sunny, tempting his eyes away from the gray lines of text in the closeted heat of the classroom, but then the teacher's voice calls his name and he turns away.

Silent and unnoticed, something black flutters from the sky.

ii. what is worse than death

The room closes in around him, and shutting in his body and also his mind, his brilliant mind…when he thinks of what he could be doing, what he had done to make this world a better place, he places his head in his hands so the hidden cameras cannot see his expression of rage and frustration; his last conceit.

Why can't you see? He screams at the speakers, and his voice comes back at him from the lurking walls, discordant and meaningless, a smeared picture of sound and fury. How can you be so blind?

Sometimes he calms down and says, What are the crime rates like now, I wonder?

Other times he whispers to the darkest corner of the cell, low and lovingly, as though speaking to an old, old friend, lost but never forgotten, and he whispers, We had some good times once…

In the unknown hours he sleeps, and dreams that the walls are coming in, inch by inch, rising like steel bars around him, and he wakes up with the memory of his scream echoing in his mind.

iii. justice will prevail

"I warned you," L says, and his dark, cold eyes hold no glimmer of pity or understanding. "I warned you, Kira…that when I caught you, you will die."

"L," Raito whispers, "L, you're more like me than you realize." He stands pressed against the prison bars, his voice soft and dulcet, rising and falling like the line of the waves against an unending sky. "You're not like the rest of them. Surely you can see, what I've accomplished."

I've punished the evil.

I've let the good get what they deserve.

A better world.

A perfect world!

L is unmoved by his intensity, leaking like blood through his stricken expression and quivering voice. Instead, he merely wonders, like he has wondered all along, from the beginning; is a façade, or the façade of a façade, and what is beneath? How can anyone be so earnest without lying?

But it doesn't matter now. The case is over, the chase finished. He feels strangely hollow, and wishes, for a selfish moment, that Raito could have been cleverer, cannier, more careful; not so, ultimately, disappointing.

"You're a murderer, Yagami-kun," he says dispassionately through a mouthful of thumb. "It's my job to catch murderers and bring them to justice." His dark eyes blink slowly, once; twice.

"It's my duty as well," Raito sneers. "How many criminals have you saved with this 'act of justice?'" He almost spits the words, his expression contorted with rage and something like the desperation of a wild, caged animal. L looks at him like he _is _an animal, an interesting specimen beneath the lens of a microscope, and Raito looks back, snarled and hate-filled.

"I couldn't let you win, Yagami-kun," L says simply, shrugging thin shoulders. "L doesn't lose. I think I told your father this once before: that I'm just as childish as Kira. I don't like to lose."

Raito seethes, rocks back on his heels, drawing a breath, as though he is about to leap. Instead his hands curl claw-like against the bars. "Don't treat this like a _game._" His voice is harsh, accusing. "This is all that matters to you? _Winning?" _Venom bubbles beneath his words.

L allows the edges of his lips to curl up humorlessly around his thumb into what is almost a smirk. "You should know best, Yagami-kun." He stares evenly at Raito over the miniscule distance that separates them, and the bars have never mattered.

"Justice doesn't always prevail."

iv. star-crossed

They've been waiting all their lives for each other.

This is the world that they see; a world composed of facts and figures, mathematical equations. Event Y has a direct bearing on Event X everything everyone needs a motive Kira so you're not a noble avenger after all but a profiteering coward who hides behind shadows—

Such people like you can be fooled.

When they work together their minds race forward in tandem, taking shortcuts, leaping boundaries, with an ease they've never really before appreciated, until they see it in each other, lightning-fast mental calculation leaping across landscapes of humming thought. It is not a word, not even a memory; _for once, I belong._

But it's even better when they're fighting, locked in a perpetual battle of wits in some mental battle of titans. It can be as simple as a game of chess. Or sometimes one of their many arguments on morality and the nature of justice, which usually ends with L doing what he wants anyway and Raito eating the last jelly doughnut out of petty spite.

Raito enjoys it so much he thinks he enjoys it too much—and these are the times he feels something within him stir, an elusive memory, a snatch of long-lost song—and feels a chill that comes from lost knowledge, knowledge that might have been lost with a certain amount of gladness.

Sometimes, he thinks that L _watches _him.

v. victory

He wins in the end.

He goes on to remake the world.

They pray to him openly.

When he dies, it all falls apart.

The masses call for him, turning shrouded faces to the silent sky, reaching out pleading hands, but it is in the ground that his corpse lies, feeding the hungry earth.

If there is some imaginary, formless existence beyond this one, in a place neither heaven or hell, Yagami Raito would have watched and known a worse torment than any devil could have devised, because—

He would have known then, truly, that he had only ever been mortal, and the prayers of the faithful are false prayers, because they go to a false idol.

If the dead can hear the living, there is nothing they can do about it.


End file.
